Marrow of Tragedy
eBook - ePub

Marrow of Tragedy

The Health Crisis of the American Civil War

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Marrow of Tragedy

The Health Crisis of the American Civil War

About this book

Soldiers lay wounded or sick as both sides struggled to get them fit to return to battle.

Winner, George Rosen Prize, American Association for the History of Medicine

The Civil War was the greatest health disaster the United States has ever experienced, killing more than a million Americans and leaving many others invalided or grieving. Poorly prepared to care for wounded and sick soldiers as the war began, Union and Confederate governments scrambled to provide doctoring and nursing, supplies, and shelter for those felled by warfare or disease.

During the war soldiers suffered from measles, dysentery, and pneumonia and needed both preventive and curative food and medicine. Family members—especially women—and governments mounted organized support efforts, while army doctors learned to standardize medical thought and practice. Resources in the north helped return soldiers to battle, while Confederate soldiers suffered hunger and other privations and healed more slowly, when they healed at all.

In telling the stories of soldiers, families, physicians, nurses, and administrators, historian Margaret Humphreys concludes that medical science was not as limited at the beginning of the war as has been portrayed. Medicine and public health clearly advanced during the war—and continued to do so after military hostilities ceased.

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Yes, you can access Marrow of Tragedy by Margaret Humphreys in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & American Civil War History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. List of Illustrations
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction: Call and Response
  9. 1 Understanding Civil War Medicine
  10. 2 Women, War, and Medicine
  11. 3 Infectious Disease in the Civil War
  12. 4 Connecting Home to Hospital and Camp: The Work of the USSC
  13. 5 The Sanitary Commission and Its Critics
  14. 6 The Union’s General Hospital
  15. 7 Medicine for a New Nation
  16. 8 Confederate Medicine: Disease, Wounds, and Shortages
  17. 9 Mitigating the Horrors of War
  18. 10 A Public Health Legacy
  19. 11 Medicine in Postwar America
  20. Afterword
  21. Notes
  22. Index
  23. Footnote